Excellent world building

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Ally Condie's upcoming release features the story of a young woman named Poe Blythe, a young worker in a futuristic world where civilizations have become more insular. Blythe lives in a desolate area known as the Outpost, run by a man known as the Admiral and his 4-person Quorum. They scrape by, utilizing the resources that they have and mining nearby rivers for gold, for reasons unknown to most of the citizens. Blythe is set to captain an upcoming gold expedition up the river, a post she earned by virtue of designing a deadly accessory for the voyage's ship, a move prompted by the loss of a loved one on a previous voyage. The honor is not all that it's cracked up to be. She knows something is up and the Admiral has his own hidden agenda for the voyage. She's been consumed by grief and fighting to survive, so this is one hurdle she absolutely does not need.
The story was an excellent addition to the futuristic desolate landscape theme in YA. The world that Condie has designed has a history that this novel only hints at. Readers will get a satisfactory ending, but they'll be wanting more from this plotline. A longer history is alluded to throughout the novel, and the future is left up in the air by the ending. Condie has set up a world that could easily be revisited in future books, and I think readers would welcome it. They're going to love Blythe as a complex character. I enjoyed this read thoroughly, flying through most of it in one night. I also appreciate that it would be a fairly unobjectionable choice for a teen book club. It's got some darkness to it, but you could recommend it to most teen readers who enjoyed other dark futuristic books like the Hunger Games.